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Here's why a hybrid Ford F-150 pickup could be the perfect camping truck

Report: For F-150 hybrid, Ford will court buyers with portable power needs

December 1, 2017

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The Ford F-150, already the country's best-seller, will gain a gas-electric hybrid version soon -- one of 13 electric and hybrid models the company plans to field by 2020. The hybrid pickup itself was greenlit all the way back in 2014 as part of the automaker's response to an industry-wide target of an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025, a target that is still expected to be eased in some way by the current administration.

The engineering economics for a hybrid pickup make sense -- Ford doesn't have to reach far for the tech to make it happen -- but will Ford be able to sell a hybrid F-150 to consumers for whom fuel economy is, shall we say, not a top priority? Yes, and the answer lies in the versatility of the battery that the F-150 will carry, Bloomberg says. Ford was able to identify a very specific need that the F-150 has not yet addressed for truck owners: portable power.

Ford spent a year on an anthropological mission of sorts, with researchers embedding with hundreds of F-150 owners, seeking to identify tasks that the F-150 is not able to do but which it could do. One major task identified by Ford researchers was the owners' need for generators.

"We would see our customers just literally buying generators from Home Depot and strapping them down in their truck beds," Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's production development chief in charge of electrifying the lineup, told Bloomberg.

The battery in the F-150 won't just power the electric motor -- it will be able to power everything from an electric saw to a drink cooler on a camping trip. So the selling point won't just be the added fuel economy, but utility for those who need it.

Ford hopes this will provide the motivation to buyers who ordinarily would not consider a hybrid, with its added cost, to be a worthwhile investment. Data cited by Bloomberg suggests that pickup trucks overall are the least likely segment to go hybrid.

1) There’s plenty of electric range The Range Rover PHEV and Range Rover Sport PHEV use a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine mated to an eight-speed automatic with an integrated ...

Buyers will still be able to get the "pure internal combustion" version, so Ford isn't forcing a hybrid gas-electric powertrain on buyers. And when it comes to wider adoption, the industry has embraced Ford's turbo V6 engines that skeptics assumed wouldn't be tough enough for half-ton trucks. Ecoboost V6 engines now make up about two-thirds of F-150 sales now that horsepower and torque equals that of V8s.

Are inline-fours coupled with electric batteries and motors next, even if gasoline does not climb in price? Other segments, namely SUVs, are already headed in this direction, coupling supercharged and turbocharged four-cylinder engines with electric motors. Of course, these powertrains are going into some of the more expensive SUVs on the market at the moment, so it may still be a while until they make sense in people's daily workhorses.